


Gone and Back Again

by Capnslappin



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Mild Gore, Minor Character Death, Missing Persons, Psychological Horror, Unreliable Narrator, Werewolves, like for a second, that feeling of being unsure of whether or not something is real
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 00:08:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15569373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Capnslappin/pseuds/Capnslappin
Summary: They had made a mistake.Keith knew that.Knew that with a newfound intimacy not at all unlike how he now knows the way it feels to have Shiro’s head settled between his thighs.They made a mistake.—Or, a very lucid dream-esque werewolf au





	Gone and Back Again

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I'm back! Sorry for being gone for so long, I've been really busy with work and getting prepped for school. Here is... this. Thing. Uh. So I got the idea from a buzzfeed quiz, actually! It's pretty much that, but... werewolves? Anyway, there are some heavy themes in this and follows a very unreliable narrator. What's really happened here? I don't know. Keith doesn't either.

They had made a mistake. Keith knew that. Knew that with a newfound intimacy not at all unlike how he now knows the way it feels to have Shiro’s head settled between his thighs.

 

They made a mistake.

 

Shiro woke him up that morning as nicely as he could. Never speaking of stopping anything that had begun the night prior, but putting up walls that Keith had only just begun to take down. He said that he needed time. It was a little too soon. He said that it felt amazing. That he felt alive.

 

Keith wonders if he had ever told Adam that, once.

 

Their break had been sudden, but not at all unforeseen. Keith saw their drift, their desperate attempts to reconnect, their sadness when it never worked. He saw Shiro’s conflicted emotions, ever open with how he felt- at least to Keith. He saw the long glances that Shiro would steal when he thought Keith wasn’t looking. When Keith stretched or when he tossed his head back to laugh or when he leaned just a little too close or when Keith needed just one hug before Shiro went back to his apartment. He saw the way that Shiro looked at him like he was everything. He saw that it ruined him that Adam no longer was that.

 

They made a mistake.

 

The week that Adam had broken it off with Shiro, they dedicated to making a space in Keith’s small studio for the other man. It was unnervingly easy. He had a toothbrush, a hairbrush, a set of pillows and blankets he exclusively used when he slept on Keith’s futon in the living room. There were mugs and hoodies and messy memories that scattered the hallway and made the entire endeavor much more intimate than either of them anticipated.

 

The Sunday after they had finally finished was spent laughing over bourbon and shitty alien documentaries on Netflix. Laughing, and then crying, and somehow Keith had Shiro’s head cradled against his chest and the movie was over and it was no longer friendly. In all the years they had known each other, the kisses they had shared were friendly or experimental. Never— this. Never honest. Never confessing. This was uncharted waters. This was exciting. This was everything Keith had ever wanted and this—

 

This was a mistake.

 

Keith likes to think he took it well, but in actuality he went to Pidge’s house for two days to try to get out all his tears before he had to face Shiro once more. Now, they were stuck in a dance of undoing the careful knots holding them together. One wrong move and they could be strangers. One wrong move and they could be ill-fated lovers. All the right cords cut, and they’re simply best friends.

 

It’s a lie, Keith thinks about two weeks later, when he goes to the club with Pidge and Allura and finds someone that he can close his eyes and imagine is him. Just so he can run away for a moment and think that anything they had wasn’t fleeting, wasn’t a mistake.

 

He pretends to not notice the weight of Shiro’s eyes on the bite that brands his neck for the next week. Tries to pretend that he isn’t pleased with the fact that it made Shiro angry, or sad, or anything. Tries to pretend that he doesn’t want Shiro to feel something for him again.

 

Somewhere between them, they come to the mutual realization that the wrong move has been made, the wrong string has snapped, and neither of them know how it will end.

 

Two months after Adam is gone and Shiro and he had made a mistake that ruined everything, they realize the time of year the calendar has reached. In three weeks Shiro will go to the cabin for his biannual trip. One that he might’ve made with Adam. One that he used to make with Keith.

 

One that he decides to make by himself, a decision that he allowed Keith to know over one of their quiet dinners. He says it after taking Keith’s hand in his own cool and calloused one. Keith’s unsure what the gesture means, but he refuses to break the contact once he has it. Keith let’s him talk about how he’s felt these past weeks. Their food is pushed aside at some point. Keith ends up in Shiro’s lap after another, cradling his head in his chest and letting him talk about all the things he’s thought. About all the things he wishes he’d done and all the things he’s glad he did. Keith comes up more often than not. Surprisingly, Keith comes up more often than Adam, despite the elephant in the room that he is. The pain of their relationship being over is still there. It’s still fresh. But it’s only on the surface. A wound for memorial of what they were or pride over what they could have been together, maybe. But his mention is fleeting, as if Shiro is unable to focus on much aside from Keith. Keith wonders if that’s true, after hearing Shiro mumble for the fifth time that he wishes that they had something sooner. Something better. Something more special and timed right and ready. Keith knows Shiro isn’t ready, but it’s their mix of Keith being greedy and needy and in love and Shiro being giving and weak and unwitting. They’re dangerous together, right now. They aren’t being what they both need just yet. Even so, they can’t let go, they can’t.

 

That night, they tumble into Keith’s bed in the loft and make what he thinks is their final mistake. Final, because this time Keith knows that he can’t forget or try to substitute. Nothing can make him feel the same as those honeyed eyes and loving hands could. Nothing can live up to Shiro, in all his storm like glory. He’s a storm, a tornado that tears through Keith’s mind and heart and leaves nothing but a wreckage behind. Keith should hate him for it. His only weakness. Keith could never hate Shiro. Shiro could leave him now, or kill him then and there and Keith would go with three words staining his teeth.

 

Shiro doesn’t think it’s a mistake, but Keith deep-down does. The Shiro of a month ago was right. They need time. They need distance and they need the ability to be okay on their own. This will ruin them. It does. It ruins Keith when he wakes up to Shiro in his bed and arms wrapped around him and a steady breath against the shell of his ear, warm and moist and potent with morning breath.

 

He doesn’t expect them to be the same, when they are forced to wake by obligation. He doesn’t expect their old banter to be back and their smiles to be broad and honest. He doesn’t expect the hurt to be nonexistent. He doesn’t expect the joy.

 

Shiro still decides to go alone and Keith lets him because they both need the space and the time and the assurance that they’ll still want this when he comes back.

 

The days roll by slowly, misty and rainy and full of stolen moments together. Keith ignores the calls and texts from Pidge and Allura for days on end because the idea of anyone other than the man holding him, kissing him, making love to him, doesn’t even cross his mind. They remember to eat meals, but only together. They go through their self care routines as one. They attend work and count seconds to be home. They function, but just barely.

 

They need the time that Shiro will spend at the cabin. They need it more than they possibly need each other.

 

When Shiro leaves, it’s raining out. They’re leaning against his packed out hatchback, a tangled mess of love and desperation and tears. Keith doesn’t think he can let go. The thought scares him that he might not be able to last a few days apart. His dependency is undeniable. Shiro’s is just as obvious. They need this.

 

He waits, patient and lonely, until the second day he’s gone; the day Shiro promised to call him no matter what so that they both knew the other was okay.

 

The second day comes.

 

The second day goes.

 

The third morning alone, Keith rises. His stomach is rolling and his body feels like it’s projecting. Everything is wrong. Shiro didn’t call. Shiro didn’t call and Keith is lost because for 72 hours he wasn’t able to hear that voice whisper “baby”. He’s scared, but not because of Shiro, but because of himself.

 

The third day Keith calls out of work and lays in bed alone, his pillow tastes like brine and his throat is raw and he can imagine Shiro’s around him. Arms snug around his waist and stubble scraping his nape. He says quiet nothings to the room, but in his mind- Shiro is asking him about the stars and the meaning of beauty and how he found in here. It’s a rerun of an old conversation. An old situation, but this place is settled on old bones of his and Shiro’s past and anywhere he looks he can see them lining the walls and can recall their fleshed forms like it was yesterday.

 

When the fifth comes and Shiro isn’t back from his trip. Keith calls the police. They come into his home. They ask invasive questions. They leave with no definitive answers.

 

They keep searching. They comb the woods. They look through Keith’s home. They check withdrawals and balances and see if Keith is better off in any way than he was before Shiro left.

 

They stop after Keith breaks down in front of the officer. Pleading for them to just bring his fucking light home.

 

The day that they gave up, Keith lost all will. He laid limp in the bed they’ve now shared. Wearing shirts and colognes that bring back his favorite memories. The mess of them on the floor of the hall, the kitchen, the bedroom. The lonely reality that looks at him in the mirror. Pidge tries. Allura works harder. Allura finds his smile once, fleeting, and then she finds his tears soaking into her shirt moments later. It takes work.

 

He’s still lost. He’s still expecting his face in every corridor and checking twice in all his mirrors. He’s still hoping, one day, that he’ll just turn up. Smiling and arms wide, he’d say something like, “Sorry, baby, there was a ton of traffic!”

 

And then everything would be okay.

 

Keith is crying in the doorway when he sees one of their apartment  complex neighbors driving a similar car to Shiro’s. That fantasy had almost been reality, for a second. He thought it was close, so close. Nevermind that it was never there to begin with.

 

Adam calls. Frantic, worried and dragging up painful thoughts with his prying questions that Keith doesn’t want to have to answer. He already knows most of it anyway. But he’s in pain. He’s dying inside.

 

“What do you think you deserve to know, Adam?” He spits, but it lacks so much anger he thought he had in him.

 

“I want to know where my fucking boyfriend is!” The anger bubbles up like bile in his throat and acid in his veins.

 

Keith rears, “Your boyfriend? Yours? I wonder how much of him was yours when he fucked me the first time after he came to live with me? What about the second?”

 

He’s in pain and angry and this is the most emotion he’s felt in a month and he almost doesn’t want to let this go. Adam flings back the rebuttals in a way Keith refuses to process right now, rather, can’t process right now.

 

“He stopped being yours the second you stopped loving him the way he deserved-“

 

“This isn’t my fault!”

 

“No, Adam,” Keith sounds calm. Thoughtful. Vindictive. “Without you, I would've never held him.”

 

Adam makes a sound like pity and Keith feels the bile once more, but this time it’s real and he’s sick. “Keith…”

 

He pauses, seemingly waiting for Keith’s moment of attempting to hold back the throw-up rising in his mouth to be over. “Don’t worry, okay? He’s still out there, Keith. I know this hurts. Just hang in there. I’ll call you again soon.”

 

Keith doesn’t manage to hold back the throw up, and the hour that it takes him to clean the mess up off the floor is a daze. He only realizes the next morning what Adam’s final words to him were.

 

He tries to reach out again, and the line chimes that this phone number wasn’t able to accept calls at the moment.

 

After that, Allura tells him to go to the cabin, to prove to himself what happened. That he’s gone. That Adam was wrong and he was wrong and Shiro was gone.

 

Keith concedes when Pidge starts to cry, one day, that he’s not the same.

 

“Everytime I look at you I expect something- anything- to be in your eyes, to show me that you’re still alive in there, but there’s nothing. Keith, he’s gone, we miss him. We do. But we all need to learn to accept that this happened and go on living. Keith, you need to keep living!”

 

He felt like he’s been walking purgatory for so long, the ghosts of Shiro following his every foot fall. He had to stop. He had to drag himself from hades, with or without his Eurydice. If not for himself. Then for them.

  


The cabin was quiet. The lawn was overgrown and looked more like a wheat field than a place that Shiro and him would play frisbee and grill and sprawl out to stare at the stars. There was a cloying heat in the dense air that threatened to choke Keith. This was the last place that held Shiro. This place had all the answers, and Keith could never get one of them. Either way, this was the end. Of Shiro. Of Keith. Of them both is some strange way that told Keith their strings were far too tangled to be normal.

 

He slowly walked away from his car and to the house when it had happened.

 

He made a mistake.

 

There was a movement in the woods. Just outside of Keith comfortable field of vision. His head followed instinctively. As if drawn by some base need. The sight he was graced with was on many levels, a base need.

 

It was Shiro. In all his glory and beauty and—

 

He was alive. Stark naked in the woods and staring at Keith like he’s never seen him before in his life. Keith takes a halting step forward. Then another. And when his voice, raw and desperate, echoes in the woods the pillar of light that was Shiro is leaves and empty spaces.

 

He made a mistake.

 

He books it into the cabin after that, after feeling those eyes on him again and that soul so close to his own that it aches. That— that vision, or hallucination, or ghost— was too much for him.

 

Keith found Shiro’s room quickly. It was the only one that had an open door. A metaphor, for the man that would’ve been inside.

 

He curls up in a bed that’s strangely dust free compared to the house swallowing it. The sheets are still thick with the scent of his sweat, somehow. Maybe Keith is just imagining it, similar to the way he must be imagining the sounds of footfalls in the house. He tells himself he’s alone, tells himself that he’s just tired and he’s not going crazy. That the creaking coming up the stairs isn’t anything other than the house settling. That the door swinging open on its creaking hinge wasn’t something real, he’s simply tired and imagining things.

 

The dip in the bed isn’t real. The warm arms that wrap around his waist and the panting lips that meet the soft spot behind his ear are the product of his imagining. Of his missing.

 

He has to close his eyes and repeat to himself that monsters aren’t real, and that as long as he’s in his safe cocoon, nothing could hurt him.

 

The voice next to his ear whispers the same thing.

  


He wakes that morning alone, but with a deer on his porch. Up by the cabin, the face-value of that statement isn’t noteworthy. There were many mornings where Shiro would drag Keith to a window to watch as a herd would pass in sets of twos or threes. Shiro loved to watch the deer, he called them beautiful, graceful. Keith thinks he’s like one, in those ways.

 

The thing that makes this deer wrong is the fact that it’s throat is ripped open.

 

Keith blinks once. Then twice. Yet no matter how many times he blinks, the carcass is still there. The black, wide eyes are still staring. Flies buzz around the open flesh and Keith is enraptured for a moment by the pungent smell. It smells like it’s been dead overnight.

 

His eyes follow the new, flattened path between the grass behind the house that wasn’t there yesterday. Holding his shirt against his nose and toeing around the body of the deer.

 

The new trail is stuck to the earth with mud and dried blood. It leads all the way back to the edge of the woods. Something dragged a deer, a deer that looks roughly two hundred pounds, at least a mile in order to bring it to the porch. Keith can’t be imagining this. He can’t. There’s no way.

 

When he turns back to the deer he’s struck with a mix of revulsion and relief that it’s still there.

 

The stench is ungodly. It’s only worse when Keith attempts to make do with the deer, shearing it’s pelt and carving away muscle in a practiced manner Shiro had taught him many years ago. When he was 16 and it was the first time Shiro had brought him out to the cabin and Keith was just falling in love with his smile and the way he thought the world of Keith.

 

That summer was a memory, far away from Keith yet the center of his mind as he finishes butchering the deer. He drags the unwanted bits closer to the edge of the forest for the animals to eat when the night falls. The rest, he inspects a little closer in the kitchen. He packs most of it away in the freezer. A small bit he cooks for himself.

 

Keith is unsettled to find that the fridge is empty- save for a full container of water, a stick of butter, and a line of apples that are still good to eat. The apples concern Keith.

 

They’re red, fresh. He reaches out a shaking hand and picks one up. The skin is crisp and when he places it against his lips, he finds the flesh is sweet. It even bounces twice off the hardwood floor when Keith drops it in shock.

 

The meat is sizzling on the skillet, and Keith thinks he smells it burning but he really isn’t too sure. He can’t cook very well. Shiro was the one who always cooked.

 

As if the intrusive thought stirred his ghost, the back door slides open. Keith hears rain and feet stomping on the welcome mat to knock off excess water. The body rounds the corner and Keith feels like he’s going to be sick.

 

Shiro smiles warmly and he’s stripping himself of his soaked, ruined shirt and this is all wrong. That can’t be him. “Hey, baby. I’m home. You’re cooking the deer I caught?”

 

Keith tells himself it isn’t Shiro. It’s just his mind making a nightmare. He turns, too quick to have good balance and flips the meat. The venison is slightly burnt on one side, but Shiro never minded things burnt. They’re fine.

 

Keith made a mistake coming here.

 

The not-Shiro sits himself down at the table, calm and content to watch Keith make their- his meal. When it’s done, Keith instinctively set out two plates. He serves two people. He sits and he watches in horror as the man before him eats.

 

This Shiro, the twisted copy from Keith’s memory, is nearly identical. Save for a growing patch of white hairs and a scar flung across his nose. When he looks up, Keith come to the realization that the eyes are wrong too. The iris and pupil are the same, but the whites of his eyes are set bright yellow. Like an animal. Keith searches a glossary of documentaries in his mind for the right kind. Maybe, he thinks, like a wolf.

 

This Shiro even grins wolfishly, baring fangs and love and it makes Keith feel dizzy. “Baby, what’s wrong? You haven’t eaten yet, are you sure you’re feeling okay?”

 

Keith, somewhere in him, doesn’t want this nightmare to end. He wants to have Shiro, in any form he comes, no matter how twisted it is.

 

So he smiles and picks up his fork, “No, no. I’m just… happy to see you.”

 

The smile turns boyish and shy and Keith is spinning again but for a whole new reason.

 

Maybe he can indulge in this, just for a little bit.

 

When he finishes his plate, Shiro moves first to clean up. Tossing the plastic dining ware into the trash with a few quiet movements, Keith wonders how his mind could think this up so vividly that he hadn’t finished his whole meal himself. That he hadn’t thrown out the garbage himself. He feels like his throat is beginning to close up when Shiro stalks back over. Arms wrap around Keith’s shoulders, a hot breath against his ear and—

 

“Why don’t we go to bed, Keith?”

 

He just needs to indulge a little while longer. Just a few more hours and he’ll go back to the hollow reality that his Shiro is gone and dead, probably somewhere in these woods. He shakes the ghost haunting him and turns to face its shadow.

 

Shiro looks kind, despite his subtle change in features he looks like every warm memory Keith was searching for in coming here. He looks like home.

 

Keith just wants to go home.

 

Shiro pulls him up, fingers dancing on the edge of his shoulder blades. The kitchen light dances across his frame in a way that makes Keith heart hammer, haloed and pure. When Keith reaches to touch him back, the illusion doesn’t fade. He feels like his Shiro did. That makes it easier to go with him.

 

“Hey,” Shiro brushes their noses together, an intimate gesture that Keith finds he doesn’t mind reciprocating. “Wanna shower together?”

 

No. “Yes… please.”

 

He needs this.

 

He made a mistake.

 

Just a little while longer.

 

The shower is warm and dewy and Keith cries when he gets to hold Shiro close again. He notices, and with confused murmurs and gentle hands and goading words he manages to work a smile out of Keith. A real one, full and bright, that makes Shiro look so happy and proud. He needed this.

 

When they get out, Shiro takes the time to set Keith down on the lid of the toilet and pat him dry with the towel they had set aside. He’s careful to be gentle with certain parts— his left ankle that had been hurting the few days before Shiro had left, the swell of his chest, the nape of his neck. Keith stares at the person at his feet and wonders if he really did imagine him, maybe— just maybe— this is real. Maybe Shiro is back. This is it and they can finally collide into each other like they’d always try to prevent.

 

Shiro looks gorgeous, kneeling on the tile and stealing playful glances from under his lashes. When Keith decides, fuck it, and goads him by letting out a sound that always drove Shiro wild, he’s met with the most beautiful sight of Shiro looking lost and flustered and unbelievably turned on.

 

This, Keith decides no matter what, is Shiro. This is his.

 

“Takashi…” Shiro tries to swallow around the lump in his throat, suddenly unable to maintain eye contact with Keith. “Let’s move, okay?”

 

Shiro takes care of him, lays him down in his bed like he’s never going to have another chance to. Keith feels overwhelmed and confused but so full of joy. Keith makes sure to tell Shiro that he loves him, makes sure that Shiro hears it a hundred times. Ensure that there’s no question to where Keith’s life lies. In return, Shiro is flustered and overjoyed and truck with adoration. Each time he says that he loves Keith too, that he never wants to let go, that Keith is wonderful and amazing— Keith feels a small part of himself become alive once more.

 

When they curl up, tired and satisfied with one another, Shiro breaks the air that everything was alright.

 

“Keith,” he whispers, so very quiet and almost scared, “I love you.”

 

Keith swallows around his own fear, right now he can sound strong enough for them both. “I love you too, Takashi. Always.”

 

He sighs and relaxes against Keith’s back, nose and chin burying into his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

 

“Why?”

 

“I’m not me sometimes, now.”

 

Keith’s gut rolls, but he holds on tighter. “What do you mean?”

 

“I can’t control myself anymore. A whole month passed and I thought it was a night. It’s almost like I’m stuck somewhere in my head while my body keeps on changing.”

 

Changing?

 

“Like, with my eyes and my teeth, except stronger— more of it at once and stronger.” He takes a deep, shaking breath in and Keith holds him closer, “Sometimes, just before I forget things, I have the feeling that I’m becoming something I don’t understand. Like I’m reverting to some primal part of myself and I get scared.”

 

Keith nods, unsure of what to say or how to react, but unable to simply allow Shiro to wallow without some cue telling Shiro that he was there for him.

 

“Keith I—“ he breathes in deeply, a quivering thing that rattled in his chest, “I think I hurt somebody. I’m not sure but, I  tried to check and I just— I couldn’t go back. Please, let me know.”

 

“I will.” Keith whispers, and the beast behind him whimpers and hides in his warmth. “I will.”

 

The morning comes with a terrible clarity. The space behind Keith is empty and cold.

 

He gets ready for the day quickly. Brushing his hair, getting changed, brushing his teeth. It’s only when he’s walking past the bedroom window the last time that he realizes he isn’t alone.

 

Sitting patiently in the tall grass is an animal that Keith can only describe as a wolf the size of a large bear. It’s muzzle is is the grass, it’s eyes are closed and it’s dark fur glistening.

 

Monsters, Keith knows, don’t exist. The boogeyman and the creatures under his bed aren’t real. Vampires are folklore. Werewolves are legend. Keith knows this, but when the massive creature in the yard shifts and Keith gets a better view of the peppered white hair at the forehead and the scar across his snout, he thinks that maybe— just maybe— monsters are real. He thinks that it would all make sense. Everything that’s happened. To Shiro, to Keith, to them all. But monsters, the logical side of his mind reminds, aren’t real. Period. This, like so much of him coming out here, isn’t real. This isn’t real.

 

Maybe that’s how Keith finds it in himself to go downstairs and outside and approach the beast.

 

The bloodied path from the deer is still flattened, Keith uses that to navigate the yard to reach Shiro— the wolf. Keith feels something like fear bubble up in his stomach when the wolf moves, getting up slowly and opening its maw to yawn— the teeth there look vicious and huge and sharp and that feeling Keith had just gets worse.

 

“Shiro?” At full height, the wolf is face-to-face with him. It bows it’s huge head, sniffing his chest with short, punctuated breaths.

 

The wolf shoved its snout into his chest, dark tail wagging and causing the grass around it to sway side-to-side with it. Werewolves, Keith thought, didn’t exist. But the dark, coarse fur under his fingers and familiar eyes staring into his own, he thinks what they told him in childhood might be wrong. The wolf— Shiro— the figment of Keith’s imagination turned its head off to one side, about pointing across the yard, towards the woods.

 

“Show me where, Shiro.”

 

It went. He followed.

 

The forest is dark, from the overcast sky, and wet. The bottom of Keith’s pants feel as if they’re soaked as he attempts to keep up with Shiro’s quick, deft movements through the undergrowth. The forest is quiet, save for the quiet caws of a flock of birds. The farther they walk, the louder the sound gets. Luck brings it that the flock scatters at the sight of Shiro’s lumbering form, and a lone magpie sits on a branch not far above Keith’s head. It stares at him, mocking, before fluttering away.

 

He shudders, and moves forward.

 

After some time, Shiro finally stops. When Keith looks back to see how far they’ve gone, He finds that he can no longer see the cabin, only the forest, swathed in dark hues of grey and utterly foreboding. He turns back to Shiro to see where to go next, and the wolf is standing taut, snout pointed ahead of him and barely breathing. Keith moves past him slowly, squirming between his body and the bark of a tree before reaching his head. He gives Shiro a pet behind his ear before he leaves him.

 

The forest seems eerily silent, now, and without the initial break of foliage Shiro provided, tree limbs and thorns scrape at his cheeks and ankles. He trips over the root of a branch another time, falling into a wet mess of a fern and receiving a face full of an angry moth. He rights himself angrily and continues on. After what had to have been ten minutes of walking straight through thick forest, Keith finds it.

 

He never believed in monsters, but now, Keith thinks that he might have to question his beliefs.

 

A small clearing breaks, and almost poetically, in the center of it, lies a body. They’re wearing a blood and mud covered denim jacket, black jeans and dark brown boots. The back of the jacket is emblazoned with a logo that Keith knows. It’s a painted spaceship set flying over jupiter. He knows that picture. He knows it, because he helped to make it.

 

Adam always thought little of Keith, saw him as a nuisance in Shiro’s life. Keith, on the other hand, always thought that Adam was a hardass. Shiro had always gone to great lengths to ensure that Keith was happy and healthy and cared for, often at the expense of Adam. Shiro had always wanted to close the rift between his partner and his best friend, much to the dismay of both men. They were polar opposites, destined to be poor acquaintances, at best. Despite that, Shiro forced them to play nice for a few hours every week or so, if only to get Keith to interact outside of his very limited social group. One such occasion, was when Shiro had him come over to Adam’s to help decorate his new denim jacket. They looked up stupid ideas on pinterest and Keith drew Adam up a design. They went out to the craft store and spent an hour trying to pick out the correct paints and brushes. When they got back, it had begun an hours long process that went well into the night. The end result, though, was something Keith was still proud of. It was also the first and only time Adam had complimented him.

 

“Turns out you’re really amazing, huh?”

 

They didn’t get along after that, really. But something had changed. They were better.

 

Adam’s corpse sat in the middle of the clearing, his flesh was rotten and his face was indiscernible, but Keith knew it was him.

 

Monsters weren’t real, Keith told himself that once. Monsters weren’t real and only bad people do bad things and there was a reason for everything. This— this was…

 

This was a mistake.

 

Monsters were real, and good people can do terrible things, and there wasn’t any reason for anything. The world that Keith knew was falling apart.

 

When he got back to Shiro, he told him to bring him home. They got back and the sky was dark. Keith grabbed the biggest flashlight Shiro owned, a shovel, and headed back outside.

 

It was raining, and Shiro was standing in the backyard again, but on two legs and with much less fur. He looked scared and confused and Keith, despite everything, didn’t want to see him hurt. They took an hour to get back to the clearing. Shiro’s body now didn’t retain many of the memories from when he’s… something else. He knew the clearing and some marking points, but getting there was more trial and error and tears Shiro tried to hide in the dark. They got to the edge of the clearing in silence, the forest was throbbing with the sounds of the falling rain and crickets somewhere all around them.

 

“Takashi.” Keith places a hand to his wet cheek, “Please, stay here. Don’t look.”

 

He chokes on a sob that he’d been holding back, “I hurt someone, didn’t I?”

 

Keith bites his lip, and fervently admits, “I care about you so much, Takashi. You know that, right? I love you so, so much. I just want you to know that. No matter what.”

 

Shiro falls back against a tree with a mournful wail. Keith moves to the clearing.

 

Burying a body, Keith finds, is much worse than he anticipated. His shoulders burn and his lungs ache and the rain only falls harder, making the earth heavier with each load. It’s another thing entirely when Keith goes to get Adam in the grave. He gets as much of Adam as he can, but in the dark and rain, he can’t tell what went where when the top half detaches from the bottom as he flings it into the grave in a fit of tears. Sobbing, Keith gathers the parts he can and attempts to place them gently inside the grave. The smell of petrichor is blissfully overpowering the stench of rot, but even so, Keith feels like he’s about to vomit. After the thought arrives, his throat clenches up and he does. Retching nowhere near the body and grave, mostly to save himself from having to deal with the mess of it. It takes him an hour to fill the grave up.

 

“Adam,” He says because he feels like Adam deserves a final word, or maybe it’s just to make himself feel better. “This was a mistake. I’m sorry. For what it is, I’m sorry. Please, rest in peace.”

  


There is a special horror to realising that everything you’ve known since you were a child was a lie. It’s a terrible truth that slowly claws its way up your spine and whispers its life into your ear until you can’t ignore it. Laughs and tells you that the monsters are real, that you should be afraid. That’s how it felt, right up to the panting in Keith’s ear. Like he was the unwitting victim of some child’s nightmare birthed life. The shovel felt light in his hand, like someone was picking the slack up from it. He let go, but didn’t hear the sound of it hitting freshly turned dirt. He thinks that, in this moment, he’s lost it. That his grip on reality has completely deteriorated and he can’t tell his own hallucinations from reality. Maybe the shovel did fall from his grasp. Maybe Keith can pretend that the shovel didn’t hit the ground a few feet away from him, too far for it to have been when he dropped, but the other explanation makes him feel weak. He does, though. He feels faint and as if he’s on the edge of falling from the last sheds of hope he has for himself. A part of him is screaming for him to turn around, to run, to dive back for the shovel, to do anything. It feels like the point in horror movies where the poor protagonist is just about to be unwittingly killed and the audience is screaming for them to act, but they can’t move. They never do. He gets it, now. He knows why they don’t fight or run. It’s because it’s too late, and they know it. They know that no matter what they do there is not escape.

 

And when the breath at his neck tapers closer to the shell of his ear, moist and hot, he knows it’s too late to run, that if there was ever a moment to it has long since passed and it is too late now.

 

The brush of skin against the soft spot behind his ear solidifies his fears and makes his body taut with anxiety. Lips part wetly and in an almost inhuman groan he hears the beast whisper, “Keith.”

 

The warmth at his back is sweltering, the air is humid and his sweat makes his skin stick to his shirt and makes him feel exposed. Like a lean meal for a hungry animal. Like the scared-struck deer. Rough, cool hands meet his forearms and he can’t hold back the shudder that races up his spine.

 

His head lolls slightly to one side, he’s open and vulnerable. He’s given up. He’s accepted his fate. In the dim latern light, he catches a glimpse of the hands holding him. They’re tanned and large and calloused. The nails are grown out and broken in some places and caked underneath the nail with dirt.

 

Keith’s final thoughts as those hands grip his hips and familiar lips kiss down his neck are that this- this scene here, falling apart into motion- is how the monster devours the man.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Hoped you guys liked it! I'll be back with something lighter possibly very soon. *insert eyes emoji* If you want to yell at me on tumblr I'm captainsomnia.tumblr.com


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